A reboot of Little Women, it’s not
FICTION Young writer enthusiastic, but quality isn’t there for this millennial internet favourite
“The Spring Girls,” a modern retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s comingof-age classic “Little Women,” is not your average literary fan fiction. But then, its author, 28-year-old Anna Todd, is not your average writer.
When Todd first picked up the pen, she was a restless American military wife, obsessed with One Direction. Casting about online, she found a link to fan fiction about the British boy band, started reading and swiftly became addicted. Eventually, she logged on to the Toronto-based storytelling platform Wattpad and began writing her own. The steamy series, After, inspired by frontman Harry Styles, became an internet hit, making Todd web-famous. After now boasts more than one billion reads, according to the site. (A “read” is counted each time a Wattpad user reads a chapter.)
Todd has become a poster girl for the Millennial Do-It-Yourself Dream, complete with a blockbuster hashtag (#hessa, for After’s Tessa and Harry) and influencer-status social media accounts, a bestseller under her belt and film rights sold to Paramount Pictures.
The publishing world is busy embracing the new model she represents, flying Todd around the globe to festivals, inking six-figure traditional publishing deals and allowing her to continue to write live on Wattpad so she can get the instafeedback she thrives on.
The question is not whether this new model works for Todd (it clearly does), or her publishing house Gallery Books, an branch of Simon & Schuster (Todd’s fans buy books), but rather whether all of this is good for literature. Does her version of “Little Women” live up to her hype? Does it have anything to contribute to literary culture? Is it even a decent read?
The answer is more complicated than you might imagine — and depends on what standard you judge it by. In this 21 -century reimagining
st of Alcott’s Civil War-era tale, we find the four teenaged “Spring” sisters living on an army base in New Orleans. Their father is deployed overseas, their mother is struggling to keep her head above water and money is an ongoing problem. The eldest, Meg Spring, is navigating the aftermath of a boyfriend sharing naked photos of her at school. Jo, meanwhile, is determined to escape the claustrophobic military culture and believes journalism will be her ticket to ride. Introverted Beth can’t seem to leave the house, preferring to cook and clean, and young Amy is trying to make sense of the world and her place in it, crying out for attention.
Now, if you read “The Spring Girls” prepared to make comparisons to Alcott, you’re sure to come away disappointed. This version has none of the striking realism, nor the deft critique of gender roles, that made “Little Women” famous. Neither does it have the strength of emotion or nuanced portrait of family life. In short: this is not the work of a developed, mature writer.
And yet, if you take this book as part of the genre it rightly belongs to — literary fan fiction — it holds its own. “The Spring Girls” is intensely plot-driven, unabashedly infatuated with narrative and flush with the pleasure of revisiting this beloved story. Todd is not without talent, and what she lacks in skill, she makes up for in enthusiasm.
Plus, Todd has discovered something that it takes many writers decades to figure out. The tricky part about writing is always the getting words on the page. American author Ann Patchett notes as much in her famed essay “The Getaway Car.” The key is always stacking pages, Patchett says: the writing itself teaches you to become a better writer. And Todd, for her part, is a page-stacking machine; her first book alone spans 99 chapters.
In the end, then, “The Spring Girls” should be seen as a fun, fastpaced, lighthearted read from an author in the throes of learning her craft. The book is not going to win praise from the literary establishment, but it will likely delight Alcott fans. And perhaps add reams of young readers to their ranks, which can hardly be a bad thing.